Circle size represents number of papers published per research area; the number of publications per discipline given below the map. The knowledge input (such as in terms of read or cited papers) and output (such as in terms of published or funded papers) of an individual, institution, or country can be mapped to indicate core competen-cies. Most publication output of the four network-science researchers is in physics.

These and many other Sci2 analyses and corresponding visualizations are highly scalable; thousands of authors, references, and projects can be viewed simultaneously, and visualizations can be saved in vector format for further manipulation.

Macroscope synergies

Just as the value of the earliest telephones increased in proportion to the number of people using them, plug-and-play macroscopes gain value relative to the increase in their core functionality; numbers of data-set and algorithm plug-ins; and the researchers, educators, and practitioners using and advancing them.

OSGi/CIShell-compliant plug-ins can be shared among tools and projects; for example, network-analysis algorithms implemented for the NWB tool can be shared as Java Archive files through email or other means, saved in the plug-in directory of another tool, and made available for execution in the menu system of that tool. Text-mining algorithms originally developed in TEXTrend (discussed later) can be plugged into the Sci2 tool to support semantic analysis of scholarly texts. Though National Science Foundation funding for the NWB tool formally ended in 2009, NWB’s functionality continues to increase, as plug-ins developed for other tools become available. Even if no project or agency were to fund the OSGi/CIShell core for some time, it would remain functional, due to it being lightweight and easy to maintain. Finally, the true value of OSGi/CIShell is due to the continuously evolving algorithm filling and the “custom tools” continuously developed and shared by domain scientists.

Over the past five years, a number of projects have adopted OSGi (and in two cases, CIShell):

as the functionality
of osGi/cishell-
based software
frameworks
improves, and as
the number and
diversity of data-set
and algorithm
plug-ins increases,
so too will the
capabilities
of custom
macroscopes.

˲ ˲ Cytoscape ( http://cytoscape.org). Led by Trey Ideker at the University of California, San Diego, this open-source bioinformatics software platform enables visualization of molecular-interaction networks, gene-expression profiles, and other state data. 15 Inspired by a workshop on software infrastructures in July 2007 ( https://nwb.slis.indiana.edu/events/ ivsi2007), Mike Smoot and Bruce W. Herr implemented a proof-of-concept OSGi-based Cytoscape core several months later; OSGi bundles are available at http://chianti.ucsd.edu/svn/ core3. Once the new Cytoscape 3.0 core is implemented (projected mid- 2011), sharing plug-ins between the NWB tool and Cytoscape will be much easier, thereby extending the functionality and utility of both;

˲ ˲ Taverna Workbench ( http://taver-na.org.uk). Developed by the myGrid team ( http://mygrid.org.uk) led by Carol Goble at the University of Manchester, U.K., this suite of free open-source software tools helps design and execute workflows, 12 allowing users to integrate many different software tools, including more than 8,000 Web services from diverse domains, including chemistry, music, and social sciences. The workflows are designed in the Taverna Workbench and can then be run on a Taverna Engine, in the Workbench, on an external server, in a portal, on a computational grid, or on a compute cloud. Raven (a Tav-erna-specific classloader and registry mechanism) supports an extensible and flexible architecture (with approximately 20 plug-ins) but an implementation using an OSGi framework, with alpha release was scheduled for February 2011. The myExperiment ( http://myexperiment.org) social Web site supports the finding and sharing of workflows and provides special support for Taverna workflows9;

˲ ˲ MAEviz ( https://wiki.ncsa.uiuc. edu/display/MAE/Home). Managed by Shawn Hampton of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, this open-source, extensible software platform supports seismic risk assessment based on Mid-America Earthquake Center research in the Consequence-Based Risk Management framework. 10 It also uses the Eclipse Rich Client Platform, including Equinox, a com-